One of the world’s most extraordinary polymaths, and most prescient commentators on climate change, deforestation, the interconnectedness of eco-systems, and most importantly the impact of anthropomorphic activity on all of these, was born in – wait for it – 1769. He died in 1859. Astonishingly, he and his ground-breaking work has been largely forgotten.

We all assume environmentalism was born some time in the late 1960s. It wasn’t. Alexander von Humboldt invented it nearly 200 years ago. In his lifetime he was lauded by many, and vilified by the church (always a good sign). He inspired an entire generation of scientists to lead the iconoclastic wave that gave birth to what we now call science (the word was coined by William Whewell in 1834). Among his acolytes was one scientist whose name entered the dictionary as a noun – and yet Charles Darwin owed his thinking in large part to Humboldt, whose name entered the geographic lexicon only as a reference to ocean currents, parks, mountains, towns, geysers, bays, glaciers, and rivers, as well as plants and animals.

Humboldt’s Damascene moment occurred as he climbed South American’s Chimborazo, and saw that everything was connected ‘with a thousand threads’. On his return from his sprawling and lengthy tour of South American he crystalised his thinking into what he called ‘Naturgemalde’ – roughly translated as a painting of nature. ‘Nature is a living whole…not a ‘dead’ aggregate’ he wrote. This ran completely counter to all the biological, geological, oceanographic, and botanical thinking of the time. A later two year tour of Russia prompted him to argue hard for the establishment of measuring stations worldwide to study the effect of deforestation on climate. He had long since observed the destructive impacts of forest clearance in south America ‘where forests are destroyed…by the European planters…the springs are entirely dried up…the beds of the rivers…turned into torrents…furrow during heavy showers, the sides of the hills bear down the loosened soil…devastate the country.’

His written legacy is in the five volume ‘Cosmos’ published between 1845 and shortly after his death. This colossal bringing together of all he knew and observed about the interconnectedness of all natural phenomena illustrated in extraordinary depth and with detailed evidence the functioning of what he called ‘a beautifully ordered and harmonious system’.

Humboldt was the inspiration for Darwin, who had also studied Malthus (whose ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ postulated that the human race would outbreed its ability to feed itself); for Marsh (who wrote ‘Man and Nature’), and Haeckel (who commented that as long as there were scientists and artists, there would be no need for priests and cathedrals!). And finally John Muir, who was so instrumental in establishing the first landscape scale ‘wild’ reserves.

Had the world outside science listened to him in the mid 19th century, we might not be facing the catastrophe that accelerating climate change is surely bringing. His thinking certainly predated Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, and ‘Silent Spring’.

Why do we ignore warnings from history, especially when the evidence is right outside our front doors? Record global heat waves, record rainfall in Japan, increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes and cyclones, melting ice caps. Promises to halve deforestation by 2020 will clearly be embarrassingly missed; elimination by 2030 is a pipe dream (and may be academic).

I have never, until now, been a Jeremiah. I was always an optimist. But as I read von Humboldt then look at my newly born grandchildren I am increasingly assailed by the awful thought that the latter will not be the saviours of the planet, but the victims of our inability to listen to the former and take the right corrective action.

My thanks go to Andrea Wulf, for her inspiring book about Humboldt ‘The Invention of Nature’.